


Of All the Gin Joints in the Multiverse...

by Jael, pir8grl



Series: The Public House at the End of the Universe [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Leonard Snart Lives, Multiverse, Rescue, Timey-Wimey, the Constantine/Gideon crackship no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 15:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15271005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jael/pseuds/Jael, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pir8grl/pseuds/pir8grl
Summary: So - here it is - the long-awaited and much-demanded rescue of Leonard Snart.  Prepare yourselves for much snark, more sci fi & pop culture references than you can shake a sword at, and of course - a happy ending.You may care to read One More Day to Stay and Rebellions are Built on Hope first.





	Of All the Gin Joints in the Multiverse...

Business had been slow lately. If this was an actual public house that existed to make money, that might be a cause for concern, but as it was, Leonard Snart enjoyed the peace and quiet. The lack of patrons made it easier to spot the ones who needed to be shown the door. Or shown through it -- he didn’t much care.

Snart moved smoothly from behind the bar, stalking around tables and through strange eddies of--something-- and approached the cloaked man at the corner table, not entirely surprised to find his cold gun strapped to his side. He stopped, looming over the seated man. 

“Out,” he said flatly. 

The man looked up--or seemed to. It was hard to tell with the deeply cowled hood. “Mr. Snart,” he said ingratiatingly, “I’m just here for a drink.” 

“Whatever it is you’re looking for, we’re all out.” 

“That’s hardly hospitable.” 

“Like I care. Get out.” He kept his tone clipped, businesslike. Cold.

“Surely we can come to an accommodation.” 

“I don’t owe you a thing. I made damn sure of that. Now, either you walk back out that door, or I throw you out.” So much for cold. Oh, well.

“An’ if you piss ‘im off too much, he may not bother with a door,” interjected a new voice. “Open or shut.” 

The hooded man turned slightly. “Mr. Constantine. Surely -”

“And I’ll help him.” The warlock’s words were just as clipped.

“The two of you are hardly in a position -”

“We’re no saints,” Snart said icily, “but we own our mistakes, and we’ve been paying for them for a long time. Now, I believe you’ve got a date with a Centauri headsman. Run along.” 

As was the way of the place, then, Snart and Constantine blinked, and the hooded man was gone. 

Constantine huffed out a breath and offered his hand. “Long time, no see, mate.” He grinned as Snart rolled his eyes at the gesture, then looked around. “This place seems smaller than I recall.” 

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that myself,” Snart replied, in a tone that just might be sarcasm, moving back behind the bar and pulling a glass of stout for his new arrival. 

“Got a theory about that,” Constantine said, pulling out a cigarette. Snart glared at him rather pointedly, and he put it away with a sigh. “I think that every time we--eh, me and that mad lot you call Legends-- recage a time demon, or fix an anachronism, we’re helping to heal the hole you ripped in reality.” 

His tone was almost tentative, but Snart didn’t react with surprise, or anything but a shrug. “Thought it might be something like that.” 

Constantine grinned, and raised his glass in salute. “We’re almost there, mate. It might take a bit of precision flying on Sara’s part, but I think we can bring you home.” He took a sip. “Soon.” 

“Sara is capable of anything she puts her mind to,” Snart said, fondness overtaking the snark in his voice, as he leaned on the bar.

“That she is.” Constantine took another drink, watching the other man. It’s always a nice view, of course, but he can see thoughts chasing themselves across the former crook’s face. Well, he’s hardly therapist material, but he **_can_** listen. (And enjoy the view a little longer.)

“But...do you really think it’ll work?” Snart said finally. At first it’s as if the words have been pulled from him, but then he takes a deep breath and continues, and the grudging trickle becomes a flood. “I’ve been here for so long--longer than I can track. And there’s all this stuff in my head.”

He drags in another breath, and Constantine politely ignores that it’s a bit shaky. “I knew who that guy was--and what he’d done--the first time he snuck in here.” He shakes his head roughly. “Even though he’s from far out in the future and maybe not even from my Earth. I know who all these people are. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.” 

With those last precisely pronounced words, Snart lifts his gaze and stares out at the hazy bar again, his expression enigmatic. Constantine, who knows a bit about what it’s like to be one who can pierce veils that maybe shouldn’t be pierced, gives him a regretful look.

“That’s a lot of baggage for one man’s skull,” he agreed. “Look, mate, I don’t know what’ll happen to you when you leave here, but I have a pretty good idea that if you’re still standing here when the hole in space and time completely heals...you’ll disappear right along with this place.” 

Snart looks back at him, something distant and painful in his gaze...but then he blinks, and the smirk is back. Constantine recognizes it for what it is--a certain kind of armor.

“So it’s up to you and Sara to rescue me before the Vanishing Point...vanishes?” the former Legend drawls. “How... on the nose.”

Constantine drains his glass and sighs. “I know. But…”

“But you better make it quick.”

“What?” Constantine frowns at the other man, then follow his gaze across the room.

The room that’s clearly a fraction of the size it was a moment ago. Even as they watch, the few remaining patrons--a red-haired man with glasses who’s missing an eyebrow, chattering away at a mustachioed fellow with a black beret, and the tall, humanoid...lizard?....that’d been stalking toward the bar--seem to notice too, and a few vanish. And then a few more.

“Ah, bloody hell.”

* * *

“Mr. Constantine!” 

Constantine blinked, and found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor of his quarters on the Waverider. He was vaguely aware that Gideon had been calling his name with increasing agitation. And he was acutely aware of wanting a cigarette. 

“Keep your ‘air on Gideon,” he muttered, climbing to his feet. “I’m right here.” 

“You were not, a moment ago.” The AI’s voice was disapproving. He grinned to himself despite the seriousness of the matter. Despite Gideon’s protestations of having no emotions or opinions, it’s far too much fun to toy with her. 

He’s wondered, sometimes, what it would take to seduce an AI. For...scientific purposes.

“No, I wasn’t. Gideon, I need to speak to the crew. All of ‘em, if you please.” 

“The entire crew is assembled on the bridge, awaiting your arrival,” the AI informed him tartly. 

“Thanks, love,” he tossed back as he headed out the door, throwing a wink in for good measure. He could swear he heard the sound of disembodied eyes rolling. 

***

“Where the hell have you been?” Sara snapped as Constantine strolled onto the bridge. The captain was leaning against her chair, looking vaguely irritable and distracted, but, really, he kinda has that effect on her a lot.

“Funny you should ask, love,” he replied, with a meaningful look. 

“Something you care to share with the class, Mr. Constantine?” Martin asked, drily. Constantine likes the older man, he really does, but sometimes the smarter-than-thou-routine gets old.

Constantine smirked, then glanced up at the ceiling. “Gideon’s been telling you all about how there’s hardly any more anachronisms or aberrations to go chasing after, hasn’t she?”

He swears he hears a nearly inaudible snort.

“And how would you know that, seeing as you’ve been off doing whatever it is that you do?” Martin asked, with a slightly annoyed note in his voice. Fair? Maybe. Sort of.

Constantine continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “It seems you’ve all been very good little Legends, and now the only thing left to clean up is one rapidly shrinking tear in the fabric of reality.” He pauses, then lifts an eye at Sara. Delivery is important.

It took a beat, but Sara clutched at the edge of the holotable, wide-eyed. “You mean -?”

“I do. The trick is, we need to get there--physically--before the hole closes completely. Gideon, love, do you recall how to get to the Vanishing Point?” 

“Of course, Mr. Constantine.” That’s definitely amusement. A good sign. Can AI’s be incarnated? Huh.

 

“Do it!” Sara ordered, her tone sharp and thoroughly unimpressed with Constantine’s distraction. Well, it always has been. 

But they’ve been forgetting about something. Someones. Ray crossed his arms over his chest. “Uh, guys? It really would be nice if you were to tell the rest of us what’s going on here.” 

Sara and Constantine exchanged another of those charged looks. 

“You tell ‘em, love,” the warlock said softly with a kind smile. 

Sara gave him a sober look… but then her answering grin could have powered all of Star City for days as she spoke. “The last remaining aberration is a hole in the fabric of reality that was caused by the explosion of the Oculus Wellspring.” 

A somber expression crossed Mick’s face, and he took a swig from his ever-present beer bottle. 

Constantine felt a flicker of sympathy and glanced at Sara, who nodded.

“Mick,” she said intently, still grinning. “He’s not dead.” 

Impossible not to know who she meant. The bigger man freezes, then sets his beer down.

“The hell?” he mutters. “That damn place exploded. He saw to that.” 

“Yes, but he didn’t die,” Constantine tells him seriously. “Snart is alive, and we’re going to bring him home.” 

Unexpectedly, Gideon cuts in. “Yes, Mr. Rory,” she says quietly. “I know. But it is true. And we need to go. Now.”

*  
It took a little more fancy flying to get near the Vanishing Point this time. There weren’t winds, per se, in the time stream, but currents of temporal energy, for lack of a better term, buffeted the ship this way and that. Sara grimly kept going, with Gideon providing oversight and the rest of the team hanging on to their jump seats but too intimidated by the look on her face to talk.

Finally, the broken remnants of the Time Masters’ base appeared in the viewscreen, the currents dying down, briefly, around them. Constantine, rising from his seat despite Sara’s warnings, directed her to a particularly lonely-looking spar, and she and Gideon brought the ship to a gently landing.

Mick, out of his seat a moment later, took one look out the viewscreen and turned on the warlock.

“There’s nothin’ here, British!”

Constantine threw up his hands. “A minute! Keep looking!”

Sara rose from her seat, too, and joined the rest of the team staring outside, remembering…

“Fuck!”

It’s Mick who said it, but his was not the only noise of surprise when a building flickers into view. A small building, nothing likes the futuristic ones Sara remembered being here been when she and...back when the team...well, back then.

Constantine pointed. “There,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, let’s go. Not a lot of time, I’d bet, before things get worse again.”

“They always do,” Sara murmured, looking at the building. “Don’t they.”

*

Somewhat to Sara’s surprise, she had to put down her foot that she and Constantine, alone, were leaving the ship this time. She was a little gratified that the rest of the team so wanted to participate in this rescue, but this...this was hers.

Mick, the only one who Sara would have given way to on that, had studied the fading-and-reappearing building as the temporal waves buffeted them again, then nodded as if to himself. He didn’t ask.

He did, however, see them off at the cargo door. “Bring him home,” he muttered hoarsely, then engulfed Sara in a rough bear hug. 

“We will, mate,” Constantine promised with uncharacteristic gravity. 

Mick nodded to him, then grabbed at a strut for support as a tremor rocked the remains of the Vanishing Point. “Don’t be gone long, Sara.” 

She nodded, then stepped through the hatchway and onto the rough, blackened surface.

Stepping foot, once again, onto the Vanishing Point.

*

The single remaining structure, now firmly in view for the moment, bore an uncanny resemblance to an old-timey Irish pub. The door in front of them was wood with a brass handle, incongruous after the sleek lines of the Waverider. Sara stood stock still in front of it, hand hanging in midair, just short of touching the handle. 

“Sara?” Constantine reached out to touch her arm, then thought better of it. It wasn’t like her to be distracted at a time like this, but all the same, he didn’t want to lose any body parts by startling her. “Sara?” he tried again, a bit louder. 

She blinked. “Sorry?”

“You alright, love? We’re here.” He paused. “Thought you’d be happy.” 

“I am.” She shook her head, and he was forcefully reminded of Snart’s own distraction during his last visit, and the man’s misgivings. “I...we’re going to save him, no matter what. It’s just...it’s been a while, you know? And I’ve done some things since we lost him. What if he…?”

Constantine rolled his eyes heavenward, mentally cursing stubborn crooks-turned-Legends, and stubborn-er timeship captains. “Sara Lance,” he said sternly. “You know, it’s been a while for him, too. But I know for a fact that there’s no force in this universe--or any other, for that matter--that would ever stop this particular Leonard Snart from wanting you.” 

Sara frowned at him, but he knew perfectly well it was a front to hide her own emotions. She’s a lot like him, after all. “How the hell could you know anything of the sort?” 

Constantine grinned at her. “Because I’ve met the man. And several other versions of him, as it happens. Now open the bloody door, would you?”

* * *

Leonard Snart had a game of solitaire spread out in meticulously straight lines on the gleaming bar top. It was amazing how easy it was to keep the damn thing clean, now that he was the only one around. Well, except for the purring little ball of fluff that was sharing his bowl of popcorn. Some things would just persist in going where others would rather not tread.

He was glad to be shut of most of his “patrons.” Still, a few had been memorable, in one way or another. He really hoped that blonde in the blue leather jacket found her man. She was a gutsy little thing. She reminded him a bit of -

**_Sara._ **

He was suddenly assailed with a barrage of sensory input, and put his hands firmly on the bar, closing his eyes, trying to maintain his equilibrium and soak in the feelings at the same time. This wasn’t new, but it was getting worse.

_Her strong grip on his arm, and her lips pressed to his._

_The taste of very fine scotch, and her warmth against his side, far closer than he would permit anyone else._

_Wrapping his jacket around her, even as frost was crystallizing on him._

Those, he knew to be his own memories. Others, he wasn’t so sure. A future, perhaps? He opened his eyes and shook his head. Or maybe a glimpse into the lives of those doppelgangers? Leonard knew for a fact that he’d never seen that much of Sara’s skin, let alone laid his hands on it. And he certainly wasn’t capable of producing that book of remarkably - **_intimately_** \- detailed sketches of her. 

He heard footsteps, then, and drew in a breath before looking up from his cards. Some distant part of his mind noted absently that the popcorn bowl was now empty of its occupant. He hadn’t heard the door open and he usually knew when someone arrived, but... 

“Hello, Leonard,” Sara said quietly. 

And just like that, everything changed. 

Sara’s voice was low, Snart knew, to keep it from shaking. He felt much the same way as he stared at her across the room. 

So, he opted for snark. 

And the words he’d almost jokingly rehearsed to himself, should this day every come. 

“Sara Lance,” he drawled. “I always knew some day you’d come walking back through my door.” He paused for effect. “I never doubted that. Something made it inevitable.” 

Constantine, who’d followed Sara through the door but was now thoroughly ignored, looked from one to the other. “If you’re planning to act out the rest of that movie scene, mate, I’ll just start running now.” 

The (former) thief and (former) assassin paid him no heed, gazes locked across the room. 

“Are you real?” Snart finally managed in a rough whisper. 

“Are you?” Sara whispered back. 

Afterward, neither would remember taking the final steps towards one another, but suddenly, Sara was in Snart’s arms. An inarticulate noise escaped from his throat, and then his composure _shattered._ He curled forward around Sara, one hand tangled in her hair and the other against her back, pressing her close.

*  


Sara, for her part, wasn’t much more collected. She felt his hot tears on her neck and blinked back her own furiously. “Leonard, we need to go. Right now. Do you understand me? We’re going home.” 

He raised his head slowly and blinked at her. “Home?” 

Sara nodded, smiling. 

They’d both utterly forgotten Constantine...and the dangers that’d brought the Waverider back here to begin with. 

“I truly hate to interrupt this moment, but none of us are going to be real if we don’t get the hell out of here!” Constantine shouted. 

They both turned to him, and Leonard cursed as they saw how little of the bar remained. Pretty much a path from where they stood to the door, really. Sara blinked as she saw figures moving in the haze to either side. Was that… 

But Leonard grabbed her hand, then, and Sara stared at him as he tugged her toward the door. “Come on!” 

The haze swirled around them as they ran for the door. Constantine ducked out before them, holding the door as they exploded out onto the surface, the Waverider before them in the darkness. Leonard stopped in his tracks, staring at the ship, but the temporal winds are howling, and Sara tugs his hand this time, pulling him toward the ship. 

Behind them, the building flickers, and vanishes. 

* 

Once inside the ship, Snart slid down the wall, as if his legs would no longer hold him. Sara had hold of his arm, and tried to gentle the impact. Standing nearby--because of course he was--Mick just stared at them, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. 

Constantine sighed, then slapped the control panel and the hatch shut. “Gideon, get us out of here!” 

“Initiating getting us out of here maneuver,” the AI replied immediately as the ship lurched in a more controlled movement. “Might I also suggest that Mr. Snart report to the medbay?” 

Mick chuckled behind him, and Constantine glanced back at the couple wrapped around one another just inside the hatchway. “In a bit, love,” he affectionately told the AI. “I think the captain’s gonna be a bit busy for a while. Mr. Rory…” He caught Mick’s eye as the bigger man turned away toward the bridge, grinning broadly, and actually slapped the warlock on the back. “...is on his way to set a proper course.” 

“And why is that, Mr. Constantine?” Gideon replied pertly. Is she flirting? He’s going to say she’s flirting. 

“Because death cannot stop true love.” He cast one last glance back over his shoulder and grinned. “All it can do is delay it for a while.” 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The hooded man = Mr. Morden, Babylon 5  
> 2\. Mythbusters  
> 3\. The Gorn, ST:ToS  
> 4\. "Don't be gone long..." Hicks to Ripley, Aliens  
> 5\. Purring ball of fluff = tribble, ST:ToS  
> 6\. Blonde in the blue leather jacket = Rose Tyler, Dr. Who  
> 7\. "I always knew some day..." Marion to Indy, Raiders of the Lost Ark  
> 8\. "Initiating getting us out of here..." Lennier to Sheridan, Babylon 5  
> 9\. "Because death cannot stop true love..." The Princess Bride


End file.
